The Last Debate: A Novel of Politics and Journalism - Hardcover

Lehrer, Jim

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 067944159X ISBN 13: 9780679441595

Publisher: Random House, 1995

Synopsis

sharp satire of the presidential debate that changes the course of electoral politics (and the news business) forever--by Jim Lehrer, who has been a moderator of past presidential debates. The targets of this satire--religious fundamentalists, political handlers, self-important journalists, feral network programming heads--could not be more timely.

About this title

About the Author:

Jim Lehrer is co-anchor of The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour.

From Publishers Weekly:

Taking journalistic activism to unprecedented new heights, the media figures at the heart of this ingratiating post-Clinton political satire overtly change the course of a presidential election. At Williamsburg, Va., a few weeks before election day, Bible-quoting, media-savvy Republican David Donald Meredith will debate an all-but-defeated Democratic challenger. But newspaperman Michael J. Howley, the debate moderator, and the panel of questioning journalists so fear the consequences of Meredith's impending presidency that they conspire to ruin him by dispensing with the set debate format and ambushing Meredith with damning, unpublished documents in Howley's possession. After the debate, the panel members become controversial media superstars. The tale is told by magazine reporter Thomas Chapman, who notes that he has adopted the narrative form called "Journalism as Novel." Lehrer (Fine Lines) writes suspensefully in the persona of Chapman, as the reporter traces leads and slowly unravels the mysteries of how this historic event came to pass. But several questions are never satisfactorily answered, most importantly: Why couldn't Howley simply report his allegations rather than scrap a long-held journalistic code? While the extensive media critique is not as penetrating as one might hope, Lehrer's experience and inside knowledge allow him to point out some thought-provoking contradictions in the contemporary news business, and his story is a page-turner. Author tour.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 067944159X
• ISBN 13: 9780679441595
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 318